Extended families of the '90s

Ebony, Nov, 1996 by Lisa Jones Townsel

First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton re-popularized the notion. But for centuries, Black people have acknowledged and embraced the concept of the village.

Before the advent of welfare, nursing homes and day-care centers, the extended Black family attended to virtually every need of the African-American community. Homes served as hostels, kitchens as diners, bedrooms as birthing areas - and neighbors saw to it that every child was well taken care of

But migration, urbanization, unemployment and revolutionary institutional changes have severely changed the structure and the function of the family unit - Black and White - and redefined family life as we know it, perhaps forever.

"Families are still the centerpieces of African-American life, but they have clearly changed and evolved quite significantly over the past century," says Dr. Niara Sudarkasa, president of Lincoln University (Pa.) and a noted author and anthropologist.

Consequently, Dr. Sudarkasa and other social science experts say an increasing number of young professional couples have had to make some tough choices. Although some have left their home base for promising jobs, many have found that they also left behind grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews - relatives who have historically assisted young families with child care.

"We've got nuclear families, but we don't get into much of the extended families anymore," notes Dr. Anna Harvin Grant, head of the sociology department of Morehouse College and director of the Family Institute in Atlanta. "I wish we would embrace the village concept, whether it is biological, legal or just reaching out to the extended family of friends and relatives. Somehow, we have to come back to a sense of caring. Otherwise, the human race is going the way of the dinosaur."

A number of young couples, like Kimberly and Darren Carter of Kansas City, Mo., don't plan to let that happen. They still live and work in areas where they have strong family structures in place. But many others, like Gail and David Howard of Fairfax, Va., do not live in areas where they have much family, which makes it necessary for them to bear the brunt of child-rearing responsibilities alone. Yet in other cases couples like Tracy and Sonia McMillan of Arlington Heights, Ill., who do not have family nearby, have created extended family networks among trusted friends for support.

The idea of incorporating friendship ties into the extended family structure is not new, social experts say: "The extended family always extended to people who often weren't blood relatives," says Dr. Robert B. Hill, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University and author of several books on the subject. "So many people whose blood relatives lived far away developed relationships with close friends who provided interchanging support, extended family support.

"We need to take that concept of `It takes a village...' seriously," Dr. Hill says. "I'm optimistic that things can be positive. But it means we will have to work together to make that happen."

Kimberly Carter, a specialty editorial manager at Hallmark Cards Inc., readily admits that neither she nor her husband, Darren, a 29-year-old plant controller, gave much thought to having family Close by when they married and moved to his hometown of Kansas City, Mo., after college. But now, the 29-year-old mother, who has a 9-month-old son, says she couldn't imagine how drastically different their lives would be if they didn't have close family around to help out.

"I didn't realize that [family support] needed to be considered until after I had Isaiah," the new mother says. "You know that saying, `it takes a village to raise a child,' I really believe that is true because I don't know that you can ever anticipate the emotional, financial and time drain that a child has on you."

Neither Carter nor her husband could have anticipated that just a week after she returned to work that their son's baby-sitter would quit. Immediately, the Carters were in need of familial support.

"I had been at work a week trying to get re-established, and then I had to deal with this crisis," Carter says, exasperated. "I have a pretty busy schedule; it's pretty hectic as a manager. And it was difficult trying to find a baby-sitter over the phone, so I took off a few days to interview child-care providers and to make sure that I was making the right choice about who to leave my son with. But in the interim, my mother and father-in-law kept the baby for me. That kept me peaceful and focused at work because I knew he was with people we trusted. That was a tremendous help."

Without regular assistance from relatives and church members, Carter says she and her husband would always be in crunch. "I make a lot of long distance calls to my own mother and sisters for advice," says Kimberly Carter, who is from Memphis. "But it's really great to have people here in town who love our son. Having family close by gives us a break as parents, and it helps us to maintain our relationship as a couple. If on a Saturday I need to go to the grocery store, I can drop him off. I can just call [family members] up and they always like to see him. So I don't feel like I'm imposing."